


three days on a drunken sin

by childhoodinfamy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 11:33:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2620274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/childhoodinfamy/pseuds/childhoodinfamy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And I was burning up a fever, I didn't care much how long I lived; or, Bucky thought she was crazy when she suggested it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	three days on a drunken sin

**Author's Note:**

> title from [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_oGM2o2y0Y%22).
> 
> also please look at [this drawing](http://sarandco.tumblr.com/post/102673553491/fun-fact-american-soldiers-were-supplied-with). thank you.

He’s never really spoken to Agent Carter before, so it’s a bit of a shock, that first conversation.

First, he watches Steve’s face go red when she walks in the room; he watches Steve smile and duck his head and smile, watches Steve talk to her about dancing, watches Steve fall a little more in love with every passing second.

He sees Agent Carter (it’s impossible not to), but he watches Steve.

It’s not until later that night that Peggy approaches him, after he’s sat with Steve and imagined all the ways he’d like to twist the buttons open on that damn uniform. She’s all authority and efficiency, but there’s a sway to everything she does, and it’s a little distracting, if Bucky is honest with himself.

“Sergeant Barnes,” she says as she sits next to him, tone and movements clipped.

He clears his throat, and it catches. He doesn’t try to cover it, he knows Peggy’s noticed already. He waits a second too long. “Agent Carter.”

And if he had been a little less drunk and Peggy Carter were a little less determined, the conversation would have stopped there.

 

 

Three weeks earlier, he and Steve fell together.

 

 

It wasn’t planned, and it wasn’t pretty, but it was the only thing they could think to do. This was Steve, twice the size than he had been when Bucky had first wondered what it would be like to feel Steve’s body shiver against his, and this was Bucky, something nagging and broken in the back of his mind that wouldn’t let him sleep, and it was not simple.

How Bucky couldn’t breathe sometimes when he was near Steve, no matter what levels of dress they were in. How Steve dwelled on the play of shadows on the planes of Bucky’s body, images flashing at the worst possible times, making his chest tight with wanting.

Together, though, they were simple. It was simple, how Steve’s hands skated on Bucky’s skin, how Bucky knew the best way to move his hips.

How the words spilled onto the sheets, tongues loosened by sex just enough that they couldn’t lie anymore. That was simple.

It’s not simple, how this weight crushes down on their chests after.

 

 

“So, you and Steve, huh?” Bucky knows, logically, that it’s his voice saying those words, not slurred enough to use the drink as an explanation. They’re laced with bitterness, those words.

He thinks about Steve’s bare legs. Hopes Peggy will never see them. Hates that he thinks of it. Tries (fails) to stop.

Peggy’s nostrils flare the slightest bit, her posture straightens. They’re subtle moves, but the anger that lights behind her eyes is anything but. Bucky thinks maybe Peggy’s had her fair share of unfair implications tossed her way.

He also thinks this one is pretty fair.

But she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t deny it, because they both already know Peggy-and-Steve is only a thought. But a thought is not nothing. “I was going to ask you the same thing, Sergeant.”

 

 

They’d spent years dancing around each other. Steve spent his life skittering on the edges of loving Bucky, and Bucky. Well.

For Bucky, there had been no skittering.

 

 

Bucky’s skittering on the edges of something now, but it’s a whole new mess to consider.

 

 

The compromise is Peggy’s idea.

(Bucky doesn’t know the proper way to think of her now. She was Agent Carter first, but it seems oddly formal now.)

He’s not sure what all she knows, but she studies him like maybe she’s not sure either. Peggy isn’t one for false starts, though, so she dives in. She never says the words precisely, but her implication is clear. Not to the casual observer, certainly, but Bucky can feel his face heating as she speaks; he pretends it’s the alcohol. His head goes light, his vision a little blurred.

“No.” The word, sharp and bristled, spits from his mouth before he can think, and if Peggy didn’t already know, she does now.

 

 

He lets it sit for weeks. Steve doesn’t talk about Peggy, but she sticks in Bucky’s mind anyway, a lipstick trail of thoughts he doesn’t know how to voice.

 

 

When he finally mentions it to Steve, it doesn’t go well.

He starts with, “I was talking to Agent Carter the other day.” (It’s been a month. His throat still tries to close around the words, but he forces them out.) Steve, languid and serene only moments before, tenses against Bucky’s body. He tries to sound casual.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Steve doesn’t fill the silence, so Bucky does it for him, and it’s like plunging into an ice bath. “You know, I think if you just told her—“

“No, stop.”

“But—“

“Stop.” And Steve kisses him, the stubborn set of his lips insistent against Bucky’s ( _I’m choosing you, let me choose you_ ), and Bucky’s never been much good at pushing back when Steve gets determined, but there’s a hesitance behind Steve’s touches that Bucky’s grown familiar with. He keeps his voice low, because the walls aren’t thin but no wall is thick enough for this conversation.

“I’m just—it doesn’t have to be a one-or-the-other thing, Steve. I’m just saying…” He fills his lungs, doesn’t let any of the air escape as he says, “Agent Carter suggested it to me, and if that’s what you want, then I’ll do it. I’m just saying, be with her, be with me, be with both of us, it doesn’t matter, I’ll take it.”

It’s dark, but Bucky can hear the indignation in Steve’s voice when he whispers, “Are you telling me to start sleeping with Peggy on the side?” He pauses. “I’m not going to do that, Bucky.”

“No—“

“Or would you be on the side? Because that’s not an option either, Buck.”

“Steve, neither of us would be on the side.” Bucky rolls over and looks at the ceiling; he doesn’t trust himself to look at Steve when he says, “It’d be a…simultaneous thing.”

He burrows his faces into the crook of his elbow so he won’t have to watch Steve figure it out.

 

 

Steve doesn’t take to the idea at first, but there’s something about it that catches. Bucky watches him ease into it the same way he did.

Until one night—

“Okay.”

And Bucky doesn’t have to ask what he means. He just relays the message to Agent Carter and finds himself meeting her in Steve’s room a few hours later.

 

 

Bucky thinks he’ll know what to do when they actually get there. It chews at his mind all day, how to make this work, and he convinces himself he’s prepared.

What he’s not prepared for is Peggy Carter closing the door softly and slipping out of her skirt as she turns around, fingers immediately shifting to her shirt buttons. He’s not prepared for her to push Steve back towards the bed until he’s sitting on its edge, face red as he moves his eyes anywhere but towards Peggy. Bucky’s not prepared for her to turn to him and tell him to get undressed, her eyes already starting the job for him.

He follows directions, but his hands freeze the moment he sees her lipstick stain Steve’s mouth penny-candy red, leaving smears on his neck as she moves and directs Steve where she wants him (“You can touch me,” quiet and firm and followed by a laugh when Steve settles his hands just above her knees). There’s either too much or too little oxygen getting to Bucky’s head, but, either way, he feels dizzy with this. There was no way for him to know these things; the way Peggy would shuck her shirt from her shoulders and onto the floor, her knees settling on either side of Steve’s; the way she would rake her fingers through his hair and then rest them on his face as she undoes his tie; the way her free arm would shoot out, pulling Bucky in by the fabric of his shirt and guiding him to sit next to Steve.

And Steve hasn’t moved, not a single inch this whole time, but when Peggy turns her attention to Bucky’s jaw, the sight sets Steve into motion, and he’s moving his arm to Bucky’s waist to drag him closer, recapturing Peggy’s mouth with his own. Bucky watches as the familiar flush spreads across Steve’s chest, and he may have been hesitant to do this at first but when he sees the way Steve’s smiling, feels the way his hand doesn’t hesitate at Bucky’s waistband, he regrets every day they weren’t doing this.

 

 

He’s not sure if it was supposed to be a one-time thing, or if it had been the plan all along for this to carry on, but it certainly doesn’t stop after one night.

When they’re away on missions, he and Steve continue whatever it was they had been doing before Peggy, but there’s something easier about it now. Steve feels lighter, more present.

On nights when they’re in the same place as Peggy, there’s an unspoken agreement to meet in Steve’s room.

 

 

It would be so easy, for one of them to fall out of the motions

Steve lets it happen exactly once, for less than a breath, before he’s pulling Bucky back in, hand dropping low and kindling a gasp in the deepest part of Bucky’s throat, Steve’s mouth never moving from Peggy’s.

 

 

Peggy and Bucky don’t touch each other much, not past what’s necessary.

But some nights, she’ll turn to him with a determined look in her eyes.

He meets her halfway, on those nights. And when Peggy kisses him, when her hands meet his skin—well. He can’t really blame Steve.

Steve’s breathing turns labored, even though he’s not doing much of anything. Sometimes, Bucky thinks Steve might like this better than he likes their normal routine.

 

 

Bucky likes that Peggy leaves lipstick stains peppered across Steve’s skin the same way his own mouth leaves bruises—in constellations of desperate movement. Sometimes Peggy will follow after Bucky, leaving lighter kisses where Bucky has colored Steve purple.

 

 

He’s not sure if it was supposed to be a one-time thing, and he’s terrified of being caught, but when Bucky sees Peggy’s eyes rake up his body and slide over to Steve’s, when they set themselves on either side of Steve and listen to him fall apart, he thinks it’s possible that he loves Peggy Carter for this.


End file.
